Business cards are a popular and inexpensive method of promoting a business or professional practice today. However, a business owner, professional practitioner or employee of a business cannot always be available to personally give out cards to every prospective customer or client.
Various methods for displaying business cards have become widespread in recent years. Many food stores, other shops and restaurants have bulletin boards where business cards can be displayed. However, there is usually only room for a single card on the bulletin board, and the person who takes that card deprives others of the opportunity to see it. There is seldom room on a bulletin board for multiple cards for the same business. Handbills, with xe2x80x9ctear-off tabsxe2x80x9d at the bottom, allow a number of people to take the phone number of the business in question, but the tabs are small enough to be easily lost, there is little room on them to provide information, and a handbill with its tear-off tabs removed is esthetically undesirable.
The primary objective of the present invention is to provide a method for displaying a plurality of business cards, using little more space than is needed to display a single card. It is a further objective of the invention to allow people who view it to see the information normally contained on the card, even after all the cards have been removed from the holder described here. It is a further objective of the invention described to add versatility to business card display by allowing the holder described here to be used on a bulletin board, a cardboard backing surface, or a hard backing surface.
The invention disclosed here is a business card holder, made from one piece of cardboard, typically the same type of cardboard used for business card stock. In the practice of the invention, the piece of cardboard is cut and folded into a boxlike structure, to accommodate business cards, typically of standard size, generally 2xc3x973.5 inches (5xc3x979 cm.). Other size cards can also be accommodated.
The front surface of the holder (facing the viewer of the cards inside and any information printed on the holder itself) is a rectangle whose width is slightly greater than the width of the cards to be held. Its height is less than the height of the cards to be held inside, so a person can easily take a card. A vertically oriented trapezoidal surface on each side of the front surface is folded to form the vertical walls of the holder. Surfaces adjacent to the trapezoidal surfaces and extending laterally from them form flaps, which are folded to overlap and form the back of the holder. These flaps are higher than the front surface. Extending below the front surface is a large area that will be folded into three smaller surfaces. The width of this large area is the same as the width of the front surface. A horizontally oriented rectangle, folded rearward (away from the viewer) along the bottom line of the front surface, forms the floor of the holder. A large rectangle, whose height exceeds the height of the cards to be displayed in the holder, forms the back of the holder. A fold along the rearward line of the floor surface allows the surface just described to form the back of the holder. Another fold at the top of the rear surface forms a flap extending downward from the top of the holder, toward the front (the direction toward the viewer of the cards inside and of the holder itself). This flap is tucked behind the front surface and, therefore, inside the holder.
The embodiment just described allows the holder to be mounted onto a bulletin board with thumbtacks. The flap mentioned above covers the thumbtacks for a more pleasing appearance. Rectangular side wall surfaces can be substituted for the trapezoidal side wall surfaces in the previous embodiment to permit the holder to be fixed onto a backing surface with an adhesive tape, such as xe2x80x9cScotch tapexe2x80x9d or equivalent. Alternatively, glue can be administered to the two side flaps (which become part of the back of the holder) and the large surface which actually forms the rear surface of the holder, for adhesion to the surface to which the holder is to be attached.
An additional vertically oriented surface, located below each side wall surface of the holder, can be added. These surfaces can be folded to sit directly on top of the floor surface, or contacting and inside of the vertical wall surfaces, thus adding horizontal or vertical structural strength.
In the preferred embodiment of the invention, the holder is made of the same stock typically used for business cards. In that embodiment, the surfaces of the holder that face the viewer of the holder and the cards within it can be printed with the same information that is printed onto the cards intended for display. This allows any potential viewer to see information normally printed onto the cards, even if there are no cards in the holder at that time.